Aims of education

Nowadays, to educate as a means of achieving maturity has become the true goal of education and, I would willingly assert, it is the only way out of the crisis human beings are plunged into. It is a reliable option that will once again lead a man/woman towards finding himself/herself and learn to compromise with the realities which he/she is involved in, as well as to learn to accept the risks of life every one of us must experience in order to become the persons we should each be.

20th Century has finished with some hopeful signals in the national and international context of the Philosophy of Education. A right extension of "practical philosophy" has been taking place in education. In the realm of education, there is any discipline that does not demand for it the category of"praxiología".

This paper tries to show the differences between this practical approach and the one trying to maintain the Philosophy of Education. Some current and mistakes lacks are also indicated: the ethical character of practical knowledge, the necessity of the personal commitment of the educator and the importance of the theoretical knowledge on the aims of a human development. The paper proposes to understand Philosophy of Education as an ethical theory for education.

 

 

This paper briefly summarizes the complex relation between education and culture in the works of Ortega y Gasset, analyzing the evolution of his educational thinking, closely related with his vital trajectory, in the Spanish context. It also revises the main points of this process, considering its phases or periods, connected always with the positions and changes of his philosophical thinking, in agreement with his own «circunstancia».

 

Key words: Ortega y Gasset, History of Spanish Education, Aims of Education, Critical thinking.